The left's false narrative about Iraq

Michael Barone:

In trying to understand news about the conflicts in Iraq, I work to keep in mind the difference between what we know now about decision making in World War II and what most Americans knew at the time. From the memoirs and documents published after the war, we've learned how leaders made critical judgments. But at the time, even well-informed journalists only could guess at what was going on behind the scenes.

Today we're only beginning to learn about what went on behind the scenes in regard to Iraq. One important new source is the recently published "War and Decision" by Douglas Feith, the No. 3 civilian at the Pentagon from 2001 to 2005. Feith quotes extensively from unpublished documents and contemporary memorandums, just as in the late 1940s Robert Sherwood did in "Roosevelt and Hopkins" and Winston Churchill did in his World War II histories. The picture Feith paints is at considerable variance from the narratives with which we've become familiar.

One such narrative is, "Bush lied; people died." The claim is that "neocons," including Feith, politicized intelligence to show that Saddam Hussein's regime had weapons of mass destruction. Not so, as the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Silberman-Robb Commission have concluded already. Every intelligence agency believed Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, and the post-invasion Duelfer report concluded that he maintained the capability to produce them on short notice. There was abundant evidence of contacts between Saddam's regime and al-Qaida and other terrorist groups. Given Saddam's hostility to the United States and his stonewalling of the United Nations, American leaders had every reason to believe he posed a grave threat. Removing him removed that threat.

Unfortunately -- and here Feith is critical of his ultimate boss, George W. Bush -- the administration allowed its critics to frame the issue around the fact that stockpiles of weapons weren't found. Here we see at work the liberal fallacy, apparent in debates on gun control, that weapons are the problem rather than the people with the capability and will to use them to kill others. The fact that millions of law-abiding Americans have guns is not a problem; the problem is that criminals can get them and have the will to kill others. Similarly, the fact that France has WMDs is not a problem; the fact that Saddam Hussein had the capability to produce WMDs and the will to use them against us was.

Feith identifies as our central mistake the decision not to create an Iraqi Interim Authority to take over some sovereign functions soon after the overthrow of Saddam. Bush ordered the creation of such an authority March 10, 2003....

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The failure to push back against the Bush lied meme still haunts Iraq policy. The people who propagated this myth have a huge investment in the defeat of the US in Iraq. It comes from a mindset that opposes the use of force in almost all circumstances. These people believe that if they can secure a US defeat in Iraq they can use it as an argument against the use of force in the future. These people were politically wounded by the success of the 91 Iraq war and the quick defeat of the Taliban. They were determined to make Iraq a failure whatever the results of the war. They have exaggerated the cost of the war and the casualties. They have willfully misled voters about the good faith efforts of the administration and the military.

I am not sure Feith is right about the failure to set up a transitional government. It is possible that it might have made some difference, but he like most of the critics of the war do not give enough credit to the enemy for their efforts to disrupt the post Saddam scene in Iraq. The enemy went on a PR offensive killing primarily non combatants, and the media blamed the US rather than the perps. It took an approach that said in effect that the Geneva Conventions were a unilateral contract not binding on our enemies.

The military also took some time to develop a counterinsurgency approach that was effect. That was not President Bush's fault. That problem has been remedied, but it is not clear whether they will be given enough time to finish the job. Those people in this country desperate for defeat are racing the clock to bail out the enemy in Iraq.

Another problem that has surfaced that has not gotten enough attention is the effects of the Clinton cuts on the military's ability to fight two relatively small conflicts. This is something the administration should have addressed early on when support for military operations was higher.